Ford: The story of a hard and fast presidency

For many people, the idea of a president who gets the country out of an unpopular war and embraces nonpartisanship is an attractive one.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Gerald Ford.

As the U.S. nears another election and the one-year anniversary of Ford’s death, it is a good time to examine the man who served only 896 days in the White House. That’s what historian Douglas Brinkley does in “Gerald R. Ford,” part of The American Presidents series of concise books designed to attract casual readers.

Ford, a mostly moderate Republican from Michigan, was first elected to Congress in 1948. Although he eventually rose to minority leader, his career goal was to be speaker of the House, something he never attained.

In fact, Brinkley points out that when asked by President Nixon in 1973 to become vice president, a frustrated Ford was making plans to leave Washington. Ford thought the VP spot would be a nice end to his career. Instead, in 1974 he became president because of the Watergate scandal.

His short time in the Oval Office was eventful. Brinkley notes that Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon — the most controversial move of his presidency — and his decision to withdraw U.S. forces from Vietnam shared a similar trait: Ford made hard choices fast. His support of the Helsinki Accords and its human-rights provision, against the wishes of his own party, helped bring about the eventual demise of the Soviet Union. His mostly nonpartisan approach was in part because he believed that since he had not been elected to the presidency, he should not push overly partisan positions.

Perhaps the best summary of his presidency came in Ford’s later years when, talking about the Helsinki Accords, he said, “Sometimes if you’re right you come out all right in history.” It is a fitting epitaph for Ford, who, Brinkley writes, has risen “to the rank of ‘near-great president’ in the minds of many Americans.”